Lucidhaze

I’ve already posted about all the events we attended, but for my final post on our Olympic experience I thought I’d give everyone a look around the Olympic Park.  We were there on four separate occasions (Team Handball, Basketball, Diving, and Track & Field) and I’ve been saving these up along the way for one consolidated post.

If I had to describe the Park in just one word, that word would be CROWDED.   For anyone who has been to a sold out sporting event or concert, recall the packed chaos of getting out of the arena after it’s over.  That’s basically what it was like to navigate nearly all 2.5 square kilometers (roughly 1 square mile) of the Park.  However, despite the number of people they did a good job of getting attendees through security checks and in & out of the venues quickly.  I don’t know if this is typical of Olympics in the past but in order to get into the Park one had to either have a ticket for an event that day in one of the Park’s venues or obtain a day pass (which sold out quickly).  Certainly that helped keep the crowds somewhat manageable.

As it turns out, the flat we rented was in an excellent location for getting to and from the Park quickly.  Since we were just a mile or two away it allowed us to use local bus routes that people coming from other parts of the city wouldn’t be able to access easily.  We constantly heard about significant crowding and train & tube delays at the stations near the Park but our bus route was never full and we could get back and forth in about 20 minutes or so (pretty much door to door service!).

One thing you might notice when you go through the pictures is that you will not see the Olympic Flame.  The cauldron was located inside the stadium and was not tall enough to be visible from the outside.  Therefore the only way to see it in person was to have a ticket to one of the Track & Field sessions.  I think this was one of the few significant missteps by the organizers.  The cauldron and flame are primary symbols of the games and to deny people the ability to see it in person was a major shortcoming with their design.  Before the Opening Ceremony I had figured that the large structure close to the stadium called The Orbit was going to figure into the flame somehow.  It was tall enough to be seen far outside the immediate Park area and would give many Londoner’s who couldn’t get tickets a chance to see the flame.  Unfortunately that was not the case.

Adding to the flame controversy, something that I don’t think made waves outside the UK is that the flame within the cauldron had to be extinguished after the Opening Ceremony.  This was necessary in order for it to be moved from the center of the field to one side in preparation for the Track & Field events.  One news report I saw said it was the first time in Olympic history that the cauldron was extinguished before the Closing Ceremony.

A day or two after the Closing Ceremony we stopped back by the Park hoping to get a chance to walk around without the crowds.  However, it was blocked off as they had already started preparing for the upcoming Paralymic games.  Supposedly the Park will be re-opened sometime in 2013 and be fully available to the public.

Pictures!

In our penultimate event we had tickets to the Gold Medal Soccer match on 8/11.  This featured powerhouse Brazil facing off against Mexico.  Our seats were awesome.  They were in the sixth row and, to put it in football terms, I’d estimate they were roughly equivalent to being around the 30 yard line.  When the action was right in front of us the players were only about 15 feet away at most.  Of course, when they were on the opposite side of the field it was a little hard to tell what was going on.  We don’t really follow soccer but the game was close and the atmosphere was festive so we still had a great time.

Pictures!

Hey, anyone still out there?  Yesterday was a pretty long day but we made it back to the states safe and sound.  The only real major snafu was that our flight leaving London was delayed by a couple hours but they made up some of that time in the air so we arrived only about an hour behind schedule.

Even though we are back, I still want to get a few more things posted that I ran out of time doing while we were over there, so here goes.  Last Friday (8/10) we had two sessions.  The first was boxing semi-final matches in the afternoon followed by Track & Field in the evening.  We were disappointed that none of the American boxers had made it this far into the tournament so the first session lost a little bit of excitement for us.  However, the crowd overall was really energized as two GB and two Irish boxers were still in the mix.  One of the guys who sat near us was obviously from Ireland and provided some extremely animated commentary throughout the matches of his countrymen.  That might have been the best part of the session.  A few of the matches were pretty good, but by and large nothing too memorable stood out.

Friday night turned out to be quite different, however.  As I said in an earlier post, we already knew that we’d see at least one medal ceremony with USA on top thanks to the Decathlon (which ended the previous day).  The question was whether we would see more?  On tap was the Men’s Pole Vault, Women’s Hammer Throw, Women’s 1500m and 5000m races, the Women’s 4x100m relay, and the Men’s 4x400m relay.  There were also qualifications for the Men’s 4x100m and Women’s 4x400m relays.  I thought we’d have a chance in the two relay finals but they certainly weren’t a given.  We were also excited to get into the stadium and finally see the cauldron with our own eyes.

I’m sure by now everyone knows how the evening turned out, so just head over to the pictures and check it out from our vantage point!

Pictures!

I’m getting a little out of order here, but our last day at the Olympics was pretty awesome and I wanted to get out a post about it.  As I said in an earlier post, we had wrestling tickets for our final event.  They were for the medal rounds in the men’s 66kg and 96kg classes.  We tracked the progress of the competition’s early rounds throughout the morning while getting ready and watched as an American, Jake Varner, went all the way to the finals in the 96kg division.  This meant that we would get to see the USA go for gold one last time!  For anyone in Iowa who might be reading this, Jake is an alum of Iowa State where he won two NCAA titles.  Check out the picture gallery for how it turned out (if you don’t already know).

Pictures!

However, what really took this day to the next level is that sitting just a few rows behind us was Jordan Burroughs, the USA wrestler who won gold just two days earlier in the 74kg division.  He was very gracious by signing autographs and taking pictures with people around him.  He even had his gold medal!  How cool is this: